This seems pretty weird. I just started electrolysis, but so far I'm experiencing little to no pain at all from it.
Ha! just wait until they treat your upper lip! 
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I had to get prescription pain killers to help me endure the pain from the lip area. Now when I look back, I really don't know how I was able to put up with two hours (sometimes even three) under the needle. Ouch! *sighs*
tink 
I go for four hour electrolysis sessions on a regular basis. The upper lip and the chin areas were every bit as painful as expected. The problem is that once the hair is gone, you're not finished, due to the dormant and transitional hair. The first clearing of the upper lip was only the beginning. Even after the area was cleared, more hair could be felt below the surface.
I use no pain killers of any kind, no creams, no pills. I saw a special on TV, I think that it was a National Geographic Special on the rites of passage that some tribal boys go through to become men. There is an Amazon tribe that requires the boys to collect bullet ants, which are kept in a container with honey and alcohol to anesthetize the ants. The boy undergoing the rite of passage wears gloves, more like flat mittens, woven out of cane. The ants, recovering from the alcohol, are carefully placed into the gloves. For a period of about 10 minutes, the boy must wear the gloves, while dozens of these angry and hung over ants viciously bite and sting his hands. Bullet ants are among the most dangerous in the WORLD, as their bite contains a very potent neurotoxin that sometimes KILLS the boy. After 10 minutes, the boy can remove the gloves, and will remain shaking in absolute agony for two days, recovering in a week. He must do this 20 times in order to complete his rite of passage in becoming a man.
We do not wear gloves with biting ants. We use electrolysis for our rite of passage from male to female. This is what I think about as electrolysis is used to remove my facial hair. When the hair is removed from the lip areas, it feels as if the tweezers are clamping down as hard as possible and a piece of my lip is being bitten off by an ant, or torn off by the tweezers. The rest of my face hurts or burns in other ways, but as Tink points out, the upper lip is really something very special. I'm ALMOST half ways through my electrolysis, including the eyebrows. One day, I will look back at all of this, post op, post electrolysis, and it will all be a memory of my rite of passage. Until then, I'll continue to endure it, as everyone else has done before me.
